Nanuet Civic Group Hosts Rockland DA Zugibe

Guest speaker Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe was joined by Senior Assistant District Attorneys Tina Guccione and Jennifer Parietti at Thursday’s meeting during which they outlined their strategies and goals for law enforcement in Rockland County.  According to Zugibe it is not merely enough to simply prosecute crime.

“We don’t believe that that’s the case, and we’ve taken a completely different view. We believe that our ethical duty as public servants is to do everything in our power to make people safer, to make the county safer  so that the quality of life is better in Rockland County,” said Zugibe. “Not only do we have to prosecute aggressively those people who are bad and need to be prosecuted, but we also have to look equally at crime prevention measures."

"We can’t just sit back and say crime’s going to happen … we’ll prosecute. We have to take measures to stop people from becoming victims in the first place," he continued. "We have to take measures to divert young people who get involved in the (justice) system who aren’t bad, per se, who may have made a mistake so that we can possibly preserve their future.”

To that end Zugibe pointed to what he calls community prosecution, which is an approach to public safety that combines community policing, prosecution and local partnerships. His office has been successful enough, according to Zugibe, that the United States Department of Justice is now paying municipalities across the country to adopt what he calls the Rockland model. Rockland has hosted prosecutors and police from Birmingham Alabama, Mesa Arizona, St. Paul Minnesota, and Newport News Virginia among others. 

In practical terms, the community prosecution model means that the prosecutor’s office has local sites in five areas: Clarkstown, Spring Valley, North Rockland, Orangetown and Ramapo. Each of these offices has, according to Zugibe, “permanently assigned Assistant DAs and supervising DAs in each jurisdiction that immerse themselves in the police department and immerse themselves in the community so they have a working relationship with the police and they have a working relationship with the community.”

In this context, Supervising Community Prosecutor and Senior Assistant District Attorney Tina Guccione specifically addressed the continuing problem of vagrancy at the Normandy Village condominium complex in Nanuet. 

“We’ve come up with an initiative to try and target the problem which is going to involve the police department having an updated tenant list and have the police have an affidavit from the tenant association manager stating that they’re giving the police department permission to arrest a person for trespassing if they’re not an invited guest,” said Guccione.

Guccione went on to point out that although this will begin to ameliorate the problem it is only the first step of a long term resolution. Rather than simply sending the affected homeless population through the justice system until they inevitably reappear,  she feels that  other solutions are necessary. 

“It’s basically a known group of mostly homeless people, some with psychiatric, possible drug addictions and alcohol addictions, so we want to try and work on getting services for them  and incorporate that so we can prevent the problem from happening in the future.”

Senior Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Parietti reiterated that the prosecutor’s office is positive resource that the community should embrace.

“We want you to know who we are, feel comfortable calling us, letting us know what’s going on in your community… if you have a problem that’s what we’re here for. It’s by no means traditional prosecution. So when we say call us, we really mean it.”

Check back with the Patch for more on the Civic Association meeting, including news about ongoing litigation with MRO Pump & Tank Inc., a new site for the Nanuet Fire Department, the state of the Hi Tor animal shelter, and more.